


Chick Lit References

by birdsofthesoul



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Gen, Gratuitous Didion References, Headaches & Migraines, Post-Season/Series 13, Venice Beach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 16:36:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17770373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdsofthesoul/pseuds/birdsofthesoul
Summary: “This is just typical,” Dean says angrily. “Cas puts us in a yurt, and you won’t let me leave because you think we need this to ‘fix us,’ but here’s the thing, Sam, next time you’re mad at me, maybe you should try this thing called talking instead of going straight to chick lit references that will soar over my head.”





	Chick Lit References

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marietwist](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=marietwist).



Sam pries Dean from Michael’s cold dead fingers in the first days of October. That’s the first domino in the collapse of heaven, or so he’s been warned, but apocalypses have become such a dreary staple of their lives that he adds this one to their to-do list without much fanfare. In the absence of immediate danger, they are left on their own to put Dean back together. 

“You two should take some time off,” Cas says when Dean retires early again, pleading another headache. “Go take that beach vacation he’s always been talking about. Jack and I will handle heaven until its inevitable collapse.”

It goes unspoken that exclusion from heroics is something akin to exile in their family. “Dean wants to do that with both of us,” Sam says. “There’s this specific vision he has of toes in the sand, little umbrella drinks, matching Hawaiian shirts, you know, the whole nine yards.”

Cas just rubs his temple. It’s a human tick he’s picked up from Dean, something he does when what he really wants to say is that he can’t even look at Dean. “That was before,” he says. “The last time something like this happened, you took him to a lake house to recuperate. Maybe you need to do that again, just the two of you.”

That’s another human habit Cas has picked up from the Winchesters over the years – he does deflection and projection like no other. 

So Sam drives off to California, blasting the well-worn tapes that Dean loves so faithfully as his brother sleeps on by his side. This is in itself an exercise in terror; he white-knuckles through eight hundred miles of silence and then he’s pawing his brother like a madman, convinced that their luck has finally run out and he’s left on his own to watch Dean fade into nothing. 

Dean rouses a little. “Where are we?” he asks.

They’re on the side of an empty road in the middle of Utah in lieu of exile. They’re camping in the car because Sam in a fit of superstition thought that maybe he could keep his brother if they didn’t leave the Impala. “We’re halfway to California,” Sam says. That’s what Dean’s really asking anyway. “We’re taking that beach vacation.”

“What about the ghost apocalypse?” Dean asks in surprise. 

“Cas said that he would handle it for now. He thinks we could use the break.”

This is evidently the wrong thing to say. Dean is nothing if not perceptive and now Castiel’s fury haunts the car like the proverbial elephant in the room. 

“So he benched us,” Dean says slowly. There are no lights on this stretch of road; Sam can’t make out his brother’s expression in the dark, but he knows Cas has just cut Dean to the quick. “I guess that’s what I would do,” Dean says at length. “If I were Cas, that is.”

That’s the last thing Dean says for another three hundred miles. It would be an understatement to say that their beach vacation gets off to an inauspicious start.

_

The AC sputters out thirty miles into Nevada and then the car follows suit. They’re in the middle of the desert and the sun is beating down on them in ways that evoke Michael’s wrath, but Dean is awake and alert, bent under the hood and elbow-deep in the Impala’s guts, and this – this scene is familiar. Sam knows what tools to hand to his brother, what lines to say. This is terra firma, one of the few constants they have in life.

“Stop hovering,” Dean says, when Sam brushes against his arm again. “Just –” he puts his hand on Sam’s shoulder, rocks him back a step. “You’re blocking the light AND you’re radiating heat. Here –” he kicks the cooler back a few steps, presses Sam into taking a seat. “Have a beer, or something. It won’t take me long.”

Nostalgia colors the moment. Sam whiled away hours as a child watching his brother work on the car, pressed up against Dean when his brother thought the lesson import enough to impart, perched on the cooler with a book when Dean couldn’t afford the distraction. Here they are twenty-five years later, and Dean is still sitting Sam down with a beer as he turns to survey the damage, one hand planted on the side of the car and the other resting on the hood. 

Dean wipes a hand across his mouth, turns and makes a gimme motion, and Sam brings him the toolbox from the trunk. 

“How bad is the damage?” he asks, thinking about the night he wrapped the car around a tree in Lawrence, his way of primal screaming when he realized that he had no way of letting their Michael out of the Cage, and Dean glares at him, because Sam never did fix the car right. 

“I can get us to California,” Dean says at last, “but the AC’s fucked.” He doesn’t move to take the toolbox from Sam’s hands. He’s staring down at the car’s insides, like he’s trying to piece together the events that led to this, and he’s holding his stomach in a way that suggests he’s about to empty its contents onto the asphalt.

“Let me have a go,” Sam says, and Dean looks up in surprise. “I broke it,” Sam says, watches as his brother goes pale at the reminder of the things that happened in his absence. “Hey, it’s okay,” he says, patting the car’s hood like he’s comforting her instead of his brother. “I can fix it.”

Dean bends over, throws up everything he’s eaten since they got him back. Sam listens to his brother dry-retch, grabs him when he starts swaying and steers him into the backseat. “What the fuck did you do?” Dean moans when he’s stretched out flat on the leather, arm flung across his eyes.

“Nothing,” Sam says desperately, and the truth of that statement makes his heart ache. “Nothing permanent, anyway.” He rummages through the cooler, finds a can of Coke that’s straddling the line between cold and rapidly warming; it’s caffeine, which he figures is decent for staving off a headache, better than the painkillers that Dean’s been vehemently refusing, so he presses it into his brother’s limp fingers, waits until they curl around the aluminum before he lets go.

Dean just holds the can to his head wordlessly, and Sam says, “You gotta drink it, Dean,” and maneuvers himself behind Dean, pulls his brother flush against his chest, cracks open the Coke and holds the can to Dean’s lips. Dean drinks obediently; for a moment, Sam thinks that maybe they won’t have to pull over at a no-tell motel and wait out this latest migraine with the curtains drawn tight. And then Dean is scrambling for the door, folding himself in half as he heaves. 

Sam rests his hand on the curve of his brother’s back, waits for him to stop shuddering. “We can spend the night at Vegas,” he offers, wondering if Dean might like that option better. “Get someone to take a look at the car.”

“Just drive,” Dean says tiredly. He doesn’t bother opening his eyes. “No one’s getting their hands on Baby except for you and me.”

_

Sam doesn’t manage to fix the AC, but he does get them to California. 

_

Cas booked them a yurt. 

“The fucking hippie,” Dean breathes when he realizes they’ll be living in a glorified tent for the next five days. 

“Could be worse,” Sam says, contemplating the single king bed in the middle of the room. “I think he means for me to sleep on the ground.”

Dean is still standing in the doorway, breaths coming fast and harsh, but he’s pliant under Sam’s hands when Sam steers him onto the bed. “You okay?” Sam asks, because his brother is still looking half-stunned.

“What are we doing here?” Dean asks quietly. “We should be shoring up Heaven, or helping Bobby rebuild his scrapyard, but instead we’re sitting here in a fucking tent –” his voice cracks slightly and he casts a wide-eyed look around the room, gesticulating furiously. 

“I know this isn’t what you had in mind,” Sam admits, “but is it really that bad?” He steals a glance at his brother. Dean sits rigidly, shoulders tight with tension; he looks ready to bolt, just like he did when they brought him back to the bunker, and Sam’s heart clenches, because this place – this mystical beach that Dean’s always waxing lyrical about – was supposed to be their finish line. This was where they were supposed to find peace. He crouches down on the floor so that he’s looking up at his brother, waits until his brother is looking back at him – Dean is always more responsive to body language that reminds him of their dad – and asks softly, “Do you really want to go back to the bunker?”

As far as yurts go, the one Cas has booked for them is pretty fancy, and as far as beds go, Dean is sitting in the lap of luxury. But Dean has always had a puritanical streak in him, and if his barrack-like bedroom will make him feel better, Sam will oblige him gladly.

Dean just looks at him, fond exasperation bleeding through. “Not really,” he allows, and Sam suspects it’s more for his benefit than his brother’s. “But are we really just going to leave Jack with Cas?” He says this like it’s on par with leaving Jack with the reincarnation of John Winchester, which is turning out to be an apt comparison. 

Jack is turning into Sam at thirteen, fifteen, eighteen; he leaps to Dean’s defense whenever Cas brings up the possession, and then the two are at each other’s throats again. And to think that Sam once worried that Jack was another Adam, a son fathered in some distant land at Dean’s expense. But even if Jack does take after Sam, he’s still another responsibility heaped on Dean’s shoulders that Dean never asked for. In his darkest hours, Sam wondered if Jack was one of the ways he fucked up; he’s always been protective of his brother’s space, so protective that he had Cas bunk in _his_ room when Cas was recovering from Rowena’s curse, but he dropped the ball when it came to Jack, not just because the kid was their key to getting Mom back, but also because Sam wanted to know if there was any truth to what Dean had said when he had been a demon. He chipped away at his brother’s boundaries, first with Jack, then with the flood of refugees. Dean never complained; in retrospect, his self-abnegation was the first clue that he would say yes. 

“Cas isn’t Dad,” Sam says finally. “You shouldn’t feel bad about leaving Jack with him.”

“I’m not just upset about Jack,” Dean admits. “I just hate this,” and he waves his arm around, an all-encompassing motion that emphasizes how much he hates his surroundings. “It’s a fucking yurt, for God’s sake. Cas knows how much I hate this shit.”

_

They’re finally sitting on the beach, and all Dean can talk about is how much he fucking hates Venice Beach. There’s nothing to do except people-watch, and the people are horrible. Sam watches in fascination as tempers rise and people descend into fights that somehow make the headlines on Instagram. Dean watches dispassionately. Everyone’s a hipster or a techie, and for a place that claims to be diverse, it’s absofuckinglutely monochromatic. “They’re narcissistic too,” Dean adds after a twenty-minute rant about the locals’ fashion choices. “Add that to their list of sins.”

“Would that be before underachieving, or after unbelievably Botoxed?” Sam asks dryly. Dean’s been in a foul mood ever since they set foot in the yurt, and it doesn’t seem like he’ll be cheering up anytime soon.

Dean shrugs. “’S up to you, really.” He pauses for a beat before snorting. “I can’t believe Cas sent us to Venice Beach,” he says darkly. “All that coastline to choose from, and he sends us to the toxic beaches. Was Santa Barbara all booked up?”

“No, but it’s on fire right now,” a girl chirps behind them, and Dean jerks back to stare at the interloper like she’s personally offended him. “It’s the Santa Ana,” she offers by way of an explanation. “It’s probably also responsible for your shitty mood.”

Dean flushes a dull red, and the girl says sagely, “Don’t feel too bad about it. The Santa Ana always drives people crazy. It’s part of being human, really – you can’t help it.” 

Sam turns to survey this girl who studies meteorology in lieu of astrology, and he can’t help but curl his lip when he sees a well-worn copy of Didon’s _Slouching Towards Bethlehem_. He thinks uncharitably that she’s probably working on becoming the next personal essayist, the one who will succeed Didion in churning out long, languorous musings on why the center cannot hold. She takes a deeply mechanistic view of human nature. “That is such bullshit,” he says out loud, and Dean gives him a look of alarm that turns into weary agreement.

“Go have some fun,” Dean says, flapping a hand at Sam in a vague way that either means _just let me go to sleep_ or _go surf to your heart’s content_. He has his shades on and Sam can’t make out if he’s working his way up to another migraine. “I’ll just sit here and soak up the crazy.”

_

Halfway to the ocean, Sam cuts his foot open on a broken piece of glass.

_

“Let’s just get out of here,” Dean says after he’s finished wrapping Sam’s foot. They’re back in the yurt, and Dean’s already finished packing the bags.

Sam wants to agree – fuck, his throbbing foot wants to agree – but there is something terribly defeating in declaring this vacation a disaster. “This isn’t how this was supposed to go,” he says, and Dean just presses his hand hard against his eyes.

“Are you getting another headache?” Sam asks, instantly contrite, and Dean groans, drops his hand from his face and climbs up onto the bed to sit next to Sam. 

“You’re about to give me one,” Dean says, irate. “Why are you so hell-bent on making this work? Sam, take a look around. We’re surrounded by lunatics because Cas decided to book our beach vacation during the Santa Ana season. All the half-decent beaches are plagued with wildfires because Cas can’t work a calendar, or because he never intended to send us on a vacation. He put us in a yurt, Sammy, and maybe you don’t get what that means, but it’s a massive fuck-you, okay?”

“I think you’re reading too much into the yurt,” Sam says, inexplicably stung because just a few years back, Dean would have been happy to spend his vacation with Sam, and he wouldn’t have kicked up a fuss over a yurt of all things. “Look,” he begins, and he shifts closer to Dean, letting their shoulders brush together. It’s a gesture of solidarity, and Sam takes it as a good sign that Dean doesn’t stiffen or pull away. “It wasn’t just Cas who thought that you needed some time to recover, okay? I thought we should take ‘we time’ like we did after the last time something like this happened. You said yourself that it was the best decision we ever made.”

Dean does pull away at that. “We went to the Ozarks _in lieu of divorce_ ,” he says, eyes wide with hurt, and clearly the crazy has infected Dean if he’s also started quoting Didion. “Is that what we’re doing here?” 

“What?” Sam says, agape, and Dean stands up quickly, takes two steps back when Sam reaches out to him.

“This is just typical,” Dean says angrily. “Cas puts us in a yurt, and you won’t let me leave because you think we need this to ‘fix us,’ but here’s the thing, Sam, next time you’re mad at me, maybe you should try this thing called talking instead of going straight to chick lit references that will soar over my head.”

In less dire times, Sam would find humor in how his brother is the one to get the chick lit references that are flying over Sam’s head, but right now, he’s just pissed. “I’m not mad at you,” he snaps, and wonders how they even got here. “And stop quoting Didion, all right, it doesn’t suit you, even if you’re remarkably prone to headaches now.”

Dean scoffs in disbelief.

“It’s the yurt, right?” Sam asks, aggrieved. “We don’t have to stay in it, okay? I’ll max out our credit card on the Ritz-Carlton if that makes you happy. But seriously, this isn’t even close to roughing it. Why do you hate the yurt so much?”

“It’s what the yurt represents,” Dean says acidly. “You know who lives in yurts, Sam? Burnt out people looking for a reason to quit their jobs.”

Sam thumbs through his mental copies of Didion’s works, casts around furiously for a reference to a yurt or anything that might help him make sense of all this, but he comes up empty. “I don’t get that reference,” he says finally. 

Dean smirks a little, and then his expression softens into something sad. “It’s a New Yorker story,” he says with a shrug. “I didn’t read it, but Cas told me about it. ‘S about a teacher who hated her job so much that she married a guy who lived in a yurt just to have a respectable reason to quit.”

“How is that a respectable reason?” Sam thinks his disbelief should be palpable. 

“She got pregnant,” Dean says simply.

It still doesn’t make sense to Sam, but Cas has never made much sense to Sam, and Dean – well, there’s a method to Dean’s madness that Sam knows like the back of his hand, but Dean has never made much sense to Sam when there’s an authority figure involved. “You’re not pregnant,” he says dumbly, and then he gets it. “Is Cas comparing me to a fetus?” he asks incredulously. “Am I your out?”

“I think Jack is supposed to be the fetus, now that he’s graceless,” Dean admits. “The parallels are fuzzy at best, but Cas got what he wanted to say across. He thinks I’m too soft to hunt, and he sent you along to keep an eye on me.”

“Actually,” Sam says slowly, “he sent me along because I drove the Impala into a tree.” He doesn’t look at Dean, but he can feel his brother stiffen anyway.

“I figured something like that happened,” Dean says at last. “Jesus, Sammy, you could have killed youself.” 

Sam pats the mattress, gestures for Dean to sit down. “I’m not trying to guilt you into staying,” he says evenly, “but we could both use the break. Sure, yeah, Venice sucks, but would a vacation with just the two of us really be that awful? God forbid that we have some time to ourselves.” 

Dean shakes his head wordlessly, and he’s pressing against his temples in earnest this time, but he sits down on the bed. For the first time in months, Sam breathes easy.


End file.
